I've spent almost my entire career as a journalist covering tech in and around Silicon Valley, meeting entrepreneurs, executives and engineers, watching companies rise and fall (or in the case of Apple, rise, fall and rise again) and attending confabs and conferences. Before joining Forbes in February 2012, I had a very brief stint in corporate communications at HP (on purpose) and worked for more than six years on the tech team at Bloomberg News, where I dived into the financial side of tech. Before that, I was Silicon Valley bureau chief for Interactive Week, a contributor to Wired and Upside, and a reporter and news editor for MacWeek. The first computer game I ever played was Zork, my collection of now-vintage tech T-shirts includes a tie-dye BMUG classic and a HyperCard shirt featuring a dog and fire hydrant. When I can work at home, I settle into the black Herman Miller Aeron chair that I picked up when NeXT closed its doors. You can email me at cguglielmo@forbes.com.

Apple Goes On The Record, For a Change, To Defend Its Products In Samsung Patent Trial

After a two-day pause, Apple and Samsung return to federal court in San Jose, Calif. on Aug. 3 in a patent fight over the designs for their best-selling smartphones and tablets. Updated to add Judge Koh’s Aug. 2 order saying that Samsung’s ‘Sony style’ argument doesn’t hold up.

Apple, famously secretive about how it goes about creating new products, went on the record this week to explain what its designers, engineers and executives did to bring the best-selling iPhone and iPad to market.

And that was just the first day of testimony.

Details of the Apple New Product Process (ANPP) and how the company’s elite industrial design team envisions and prototypes new products have been the source of speculation in many “sources said” stories and books for the past three decades. But the opening day of the four-week trial, in which Apple has accused supplier-turned-rival Samsung Electronics of copying its smartphone and tablet designs, saw Apple spilling the beans as it defends its product designs and brand and fends off a countersuit claiming it violated five Samsung patents.

“Apple’s strategy from the beginning of this litigation has been to make this case more than simply a boring patent infringement trial involving difficult to understand technology,” said Peter Toren, an attorney with Weisbrod Matteis & Copley in Washington, D.C. “Apple wants to tell a story to the jury, and to the public, about how Samsung ripped of its most valuable technology. This theme is consistent with Steve Job’s viewpoint that Apple’s competitors are getting a free ride and that Apple was going to do everything possible to stop this, regardless of cost.”

And since telling — and selling — that story to jurors involves opening up, Apple watchers are getting a rare glimpse inside the Cupertino, California company.

After both sides presented opening arguments in federal court in San Jose, Calif. on July 31, Apple called its first witnesses — Christopher Stringer, a member of the industrial design team, and Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

Stringer, resembling The Beatles’ George Harrison in an off-white suit and speaking with a British accent, told the court he’s part of a group of 15 to 16 industrial designers who work with Apple’s design chief, Jonathan Ive, at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. Designers gather around the kitchen table (literally) in the design lab, where they discuss, debate and sketch their ideas before turning them into computer-aided design (CAD) files, which are into turn made into physical models.

A named inventor on some of the iPhone and iPad patents in dispute, Stringer, who joined Apple in 1995, said every member of the ID team contributes to Apple’s product designs and that most are longtime employees comfortable with working together. “It’s a brutally honest circle of debate,” he said.

The ID team, Stringer added, is “maniacally” focused on every aspect of design, from the shape and size of the buttons that grace Apple’s products to the number of seams in the product casings to the materials used. Apple created dozens of models before settling on its final design, a fact that was illustrated to the 9-person jury (one juror was excused for hardship reasons) as Apple attorney Harold McElhinny handed Stringer some of the early iPhone and iPad models that were rejected.

“We were looking for a new, original and beautiful update, something that would wow the world,” Stringer said. Apple’s then CEO Steve Jobs, moving into a mobile-phone market with large, entrenched rivals, had “doubts” because he knew the company was taking a risk as it took on the challenge of reinventing mobile phones. “This broke new ground. It was more than a phone. Smartphones existed, but they were like tiny little computers. We came up with something breathtaking. It was revolutionary.”

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

The Original iPhone design, was Stolen from LG after LG had shown the working Model LG Prada in MARCH of 2007 at CeBIT in Germany! (So obviously in development LONG before the iPhony! – www.slashgear.com/slashgear-at-cebit-lg-prada-phone-hands-on-164344/

Proof!?, the iPhone Prototype was not shown until NINE Months Later on January 9 2008, plenty of time to STEAL the design from LG! “On January 9, 2007, Jobs announced the iPhone at the Macworld convention,” If you don’t see the outright design Theft, you’re nuts!